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Introduction

The Prologue graphically evokes a wild storm raging around the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. Lucifer and the evil Spirits of the Air (sopranos and altos) try, in vain, to tear down the Cross. The Bells (tenors and basses) ring their defiance. Defeated, the attackers sweep away and organ and voices are heard from within.

In the first scene Prince Henry sits alone and ill in a tower of the Castle of Vautsburg on the Rhine. It is midnight and he longs for sleep and peace (“I cannot sleep!”). Suddenly there is a flash of lightning and Lucifer appears, disguised as a travelling physician (“All hail, Prince Henry”). The ‘doctor’ learns that the Prince has been told by the celebrated physicians of Salerno that there is only one cure for his malady: the blood of a maiden who shall freely die for his sake. Regarding the cure as impossible, Prince Henry, in despair, allows Lucifer to tempt him with alcohol (“This little flask”) to which – despite the warnings of the guardian Angels – he succumbs (“Through every vein”).

A lyrical string interlude opens Scene 2, evoking the quiet evening described by Ursula (“Slowly, slowly”). The villagers are gathered outside her house after their day’s work and as the lamps are lit inside they sing an evening hymn (“O gladsome Light”). Prince Henry, passing by, hears them and adds his personal ‘Amen’ before the villagers disperse to their homes. Ursula and her daughter Elsie hear the Prince (“Who was it said ‘Amen’?”). Elsie wishes that she could cure his dreadful sorrow and pain and, learning the sacrifice this must entail, offers her life. Her mother pleads with her but Elsie is convinced that she has seen her fate in a vision of Christ beckoning her to Heaven. Left alone, Elsie, prays to Christ that her sacrifice may bring her closer to Him (“My Redeemer and my Lord”). Prince Henry overhears and approaches Elsie as angels sing ‘Amen’. Slowly they pass into the house and darkness falls.

Scene 3 finds Prince Henry, Elsie and their attendants on the road to Salerno (“Onward and onward”). The couple delight in each other’s company but the Prince cannot forget the fate that waits for Elsie. They turn down a green lane and soon come upon a band of weary pilgrims chanting the Hymn to Saint Hildebert (“Me receptet Sion illa”). Lucifer, again disguised – now as a friar – is amongst them (“Here am I, too, in the pious band”). He mocks the pilgrims and gloats over the fate of Elsie, for he has plans of his own for her. The pilgrims pass on, their chant fading in the distance. Prince Henry and Elsie continue on their journey. As evening descends they reach a height overlooking the sea and make camp. The Prince and Elsie in turn contemplate the vastness of the sea and the clear night sky (“It is the sea”). Both are uneasy as each vista conjures up ghostly visions that disturb their new-found happiness (“The night is calm”).

Scene 4 is set in the Medical School at Salerno. Lucifer, now disguised as a doctor, awaits the Prince and Elsie (“My guests approach!”). His plan is now clear: posing as Friar Angelo, he intends to perform the sacrificial rite and claim Elsie’s soul not for God but for himself. But he is fearful that he may yet be thwarted. Prince Henry presents Elsie to the ‘friar’. Still she is resolved to die; but as she is taken away the Prince intervenes: he had wished only to test her devotion. Lucifer bars the door but the attendants break it down and Elsie is saved from death and eternal damnation.

Ursula waits anxiously for news of her daughter. At the opening of Scene 5 she is alone in her cottage when through the open door she sees a forester, dressed in the Prince’s livery, approach (“Who is it coming under the trees?”). He tells Ursula that Elsie is alive (“Your daughter lives”) and she gives thanks to the Virgin Mary for the life of her child (“Virgin, who lovest the poor and lowly”).

Scene 5 is set on a terrace of the Castle of Vautsburg, where Prince Henry and Elsie stand alone on the evening of their wedding day (“We are alone”). As the bells of Geisenheim ring in the distance, the Prince tells how Charlemagne had heard these same bells many years ago. He goes on to tell of Fastrada, the emperor’s wife, who died and whose golden ring her inconsolable husband cast into the waters of a lake. In Elsie’s eyes he sees the blue of those deep, calm waters, and, beneath them, shining like Fastrada’s ring, the selfless love she has for him.

The Choral Epilogue adds a final comment. Just as the rain brings life to the arid land, the Prince’s malady is cured by love (“God sent His messenger, the rain”). To Elsie, faith and selflessness bring their immortal rewards. Her story, written in characters of gold, shall burn and shine through every age thereafter.

(Midnight. A chamber in a tower in the Castle of Vautsburg on the Rhine. Prince Henry is sitting alone, ill, and restless)

Prince Henry:
I cannot sleep! My fevered brain
Calls up the vanished past again,
And throws its misty splendours
Deep into the pallid realms of sleep!
Rest, rest! O give me rest and peace!
The thought of life that ne’er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast,
The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep.

(A flash of lightning out of which Lucifer appears in the garb of a travelling physician)

Lucifer:
Your Highness, you behold in me only a travelling physician;
One of the few who have a mission to cure incurable diseases,
Or those that are called so.
What is your illness?

Prince Henry:
It has no name.
A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame.
Even the doctors of Salern send me back word they can discern
No cure for a malady like this, save one,
Which in its nature is impossible, and cannot be.

Lucifer:
What is their remedy?

Prince Henry:
You shall see; writ in this scroll is the mystery.

Lucifer (reading):
‘The only remedy that remains
Is the blood that flows from a maiden’s veins,
Who of her own free will shall die,
And give her life as the price of yours.’

That is the strangest of all cures,
And one, I think, you will never try.
Meanwhile permit me to recommend
As the matter admits of no delay,
My wonderful Catholicon,
Of very subtle and magical powers.

Prince Henry:
Purge with your nostrums and drugs infernal,
The spouts and gargoyles of these towers,
Not me. My faith is utterly gone
In every power but the Power Supernal.

Lucifer (showing a flask):
Behold it here!
This little flask contains the wonderful quintessence,
The perfect flower and efflorescence
Of all the knowledge man can ask!
‘Tis alcohol, in the Arab speech
Of him whose wondrous lore I teach!

Prince Henry:
How limpid, pure, and crystalline!
The little wavelets dance and shine!

Lucifer (pouring):
Let not the quantity alarm you;
You may drink all; it will not harm you.

Elsie:
It was the Prince. He is gone again.
Would I could do something for his sake;
Something to cure his sorrow and pain!

Ursula:
That no one can, neither thou nor I,
Nor anyone else.

Elsie:
And must he die?

Ursula:
Unless some maiden of her own accord
Offers her life for that of her lord.

Elsie:
I will.

Ursula:
Foolish child, be still.

Elsie:
I mean it truly; for his sake
I will myself the offering make,
And give my life to purchase his.

Ursula:
My child, my child, thou must not die!

Elsie:
Why should I live? Do I not know
The life of woman is full of woe?
Toiling on and on and on,
With breaking heart and tearful eyes,
And silent lips, and in the soul
The secret longings that arise,
Which this world never satisfies!

Ursula:
Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
Alas that I should live to see
Thy death, beloved, and to stand
Above thy grave. Ah, woe the day!

Elsie:
Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie beneath the flowers of another land,
For at Salerno, far away, over the mountains, over the sea,
It is appointed me to die.

Ursula:
In God’s own time, my heart’s delight,
When He shall call thee. Not before.

Elsie:
I heard Him call. When Christ ascended
Triumphantly from star to star,
He left the gates of Heaven ajar.
I had a vision in the night
And saw Him standing at the door
Of His Father’s mansion, vast and splendid,
And beckoning to me from afar.

Ursula (entering the house):
What if this were of God! Ah! then
Gainsay dare I not. Amen.

Elsie (left alone):
My Redeemer and my Lord,
I beseech Thee, I entreat Thee,
Guide me in each act and word,
That hereafter I may meet Thee,
Watching, waiting, hoping, yearning,
With my lamp well trimmed and burning.

If my feeble prayer can reach Thee,
O, my Saviour, I beseech Thee,
Let me follow where Thou leadest,
Let me, bleeding as Thou bleedest,
Die, if dying I may give
Life to one who asks to live;
And more nearly,
Dying thus, resemble Thee.

Lucifer (as a friar in the procession):
Here am I, too, in the pious band,
The soles of my feet are hard and tanned.
There is my German Prince again,
Far on his journey to Salern,
And the lovesick girl, whose heated brain
Is sowing the cloud to reap the rain;
But it’s a long road that has no turn!

Let them quietly hold their way,
I have also a part in the play.
But first I must act to my heart’s content
This mummery and this merriment,
And drive this motley flock of sheep
Into the fold where drink and sleep
The jolly old friars of Benevent.
Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh,
To see these beggars hobble along,
Lamed and maimed and fed upon chaff,
Chanting their wonderful piff and paff,
And, to make up for not understanding the song,
Singing it fiercely, and wild, and strong!

Prince Henry:
It is the sea; it is the sea,
In all its vague immensity;
Fading and darkening in the distance!
Silent, majestical, and slow
The white ships haunt it to and fro,
With all their ghostly sails unfurled,
As phantoms from another world
Haunt the dim confines of existence.

Elsie:
The night is calm and cloudless,
And still as still can be;
The stars come forth to listen
To the music of the sea;
In snow-white robes uprising
The ghostly choirs respond,
And sadly and unceasing
The mournful voice sings on,
And the snow-white choirs still answer,
Christe eleison!

Attendants:
The night is calm and cloudless,
And still as still can be;
The stars come forth to listen
To the music of the sea;
In snow-white robes uprising
The ghostly choirs respond,
And sadly and unceasing
The mournful voice sings on,
And the snow-white choirs still answer,
Christe eleison!

Lucifer:
My guests approach! There is in the air
An odour of innocence and of prayer!
I cannot breathe such an atmosphere;
My soul is filled with a nameless fear,
That after all my restless endeavour,
The most ethereal, most divine,
Will escape from my hands for ever and ever.
But the other is already mine.

Scene 4 No 2: Can you direct us to Friar Angelo? (Prince Henry/Lucifer/Elsie)

Elsie (to the attendants):
Weep not, my friends! Rather rejoice with me.
I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone,
And you will have another friend in heaven.
There is no more to say, let us go in.

Prince Henry:
Not one step further! I only meant to put thy courage to the proof.
Friar Angelo! I charge you on your life, believe not what she says, for she is mad.

Elsie:
Alas! Prince Henry!

Scene 4 No 5: Come with me, this Way (Lucifer/Prince Henry/Attendants/Elsie)

Ursula (looking through the open door):
Who is it coming under the trees?
A man in the Prince’s livery dressed!
He fills my heart with strange alarm!

(A forester enters)

Forester:
Is this the tenant Gottlieb’s farm?

Ursula:
This is his farm and I his wife,

Forester:
News from the Prince!

Ursula:
Of death or life?

Forester:
Your daughter lives, and the Prince is well.
You will learn, ere long, how it all befell.
Her heart for a moment never failed:
Bllt when they reached Salerno’s gate,
The Prince’s nobler self prevailed,
And saved her for a nobler fate.

Ursula:
Virgin, who lovest the poor and lowly,
If the loud cry of a mother’s heart
Can ever ascend to where thou art,
Into thy blessed hands and holy,
Receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
Our child who was dead again is living.

O bring me to her; for mine eyes
Are hungry to behold her face;
My very soul within me cries;
My very hands seem to caress her,
To see her, gaze at her, and bless her;
Dear Elsie, child of God and grace!

Prince Henry:
Dear Elsie, many years ago
These same soft bells at eventide
Rang in the ears of Charlemagne,
As, seated by Fastrada’s side
At Ingelheim, in all his pride,
He heard their sound with secret pain.

Elsie:
Their voices only speak to me
Of peace and deep tranquillity,
And endless confidence in thee.

Prince Henry:
Thou know’st the story of her ring,
How, when the court went back to Aix,
Fastrada died; and how the king
Sat watching by her night and day.
Till into one of the blue lakes
Which water that delicious land,
They cast the ring drawn from her hand:
And the great monarch sat serene
And sad beside the fated shore,
Nor left the land for evermore.

Choral:
God sent His messenger, the rain,
And said unto the mountain brook,
‘Rise up, and from thy caverns look,
And leap, with naked snow-white feet,
From the cool hills into the heat
Of the broad and arid plain’.

God sent His messenger of faith,
And whispered in the maiden’s heart,
‘Rise up, and look from where thou art.
And scatter with unselfish hands
Thy freshness on the barren sands
And solitudes of death’.

The deed divine
Is written in characters of gold
That never shall grow old,
But through all ages
Burn and shine!